PM's top advisor slams private sector: 'No R&D culture, industry titans change the topic'

Sanjeev Sanyal, economist and member of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, has raised concerns over India's insufficient investment in research and development (R&D), especially within the private sector.

In a conversation with Samir Saran of ORF, he highlighted that India is at a crucial demographic peak, a phase that will only last for 25 to 30 more years. "We have just about entered our demographic peak period. However, be very, very clear that this is not going to last forever," the economist said, stressing the urgency of capitalising on this window to accelerate India's growth.

Sanyal noted that to achieve the level of economic growth that China experienced in the past two decades, India needs all sectors firing on all cylinders. This includes reforms across government, judiciary, and industry.

He also pointed out the role of intellectual risk, saying, "I have worked for the last three, four years fixing India's patent system. It's now reasonably efficient. But you know what problem we now have? We don't get enough applications."

The economist explained that despite improvements in the patenting system, India receives only 100,000 patent applications annually, far below the 900,000 applications China handles. Even in the best-case scenario, India grants only 40,000 patents a year, which is insufficient compared to China's output.

"In the next 12 months, India's patenting system will be good enough to deal with 2.5 lakh applications a year. Do you know how many we get? We get 100,000 applications a year. About 40% of it will actually be given patents. So, we're getting only 100,000 patents a year. We can only at the best give 40,000 patent actual grants. China gives about 900,000 patents a year. Even if you leave out utility patents, low-quality patents, it gives out about 300,000 patents a year," he said. 

"So, China gives out 300,000 patents a year. Our best-case scenario is 40,000, and that's not because the government is the bottleneck anymore. It used to be, but we have fixed it. So, we now need that risk-taking, that patenting culture -  and a lot of it has to come from private labs," the top policy advisor added.

Sanyal said that the government labs in India can be improved, but worldwide, most of the patenting is done by universities, and very importantly, the private sector. However, he expressed frustration that the private sector is not stepping up. "Indian private sector hardly invests in R&D because there is no culture of doing R&D," Sanyal said. 

He also criticised industry leaders for deflecting attention away from the issue at forums like CII and FICCI, where discussions often shift to corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities instead of innovation and R&D. "Whenever I go to an event by CII, FICCI and all these kinds of forums - and I raise this issue, the so-called titans of industry try to change the topic to some CSR activity, some weavers in Jharkhand or something like that. So, this is part of the culture change that I'm trying to push." 

Sanyal was discussing India's shipbuilding revival and his 'stitched shipbuilding' project - a major initiative to recreate ancient Indian ocean-going vessels using traditional techniques.​​ Speaking on his project, he said: "This ship project is not about ships in the end. It is ultimately unleashing the spirit of risk-taking. I'm trying to tie it in with an understanding of ourselves and of our history of explorers, adventurers, and risk-takers."